Thoughts on Mirror's Edge

Back when Mirror's Edge came out,
there was a flurry of writing about it in the online gaming criticism
community. I didn't get around to playing it until it recently, so I'm a
bit late to the party in posting some thoughts on it. So I'll start by
rounding up the existing writing on the game before offering my
thoughts.

In
a very interesting post, Ben Medler argues that Mirror's Edge is
modernist, while games like Assassin's Creed are postmodernist. [Update 2014-04-20: Original link dead; archival copy available here.]

The Runner is a whole blog about various aspects of the game, and it's written in a very nice sort of prose. [Update 2014-04-20: Original link dead. Some text and images archived here. Text without images archived here. Some posts can be seen in complete text+images form at this archive - filter the results by typing the number "1913" in the filter text box. See also this article about the disappearance of this blog.]

Richard Terrell compared how the game functions in 2D vs 3D: Part I, Part II, and Part III. [Update 2014-04-20: Links corrected.]

I can't say too much about Mirror's Edge
(hereafter ME) that hasn't already been discussed (I'm just not that
original compared to some of these fine folks!), but I want to bring up
Faith's role as a female lead again. It seems to me, especially given
the developer's stated disappointment at the objectifying fan art, that
the game was something of a conscious effort to address the role of
female characters in gaming. Personally, I thought the game made some
good forward progress in that respect, despite also making a few
missteps, so I want to do some brief (and very incomplete) analysis of
the game as a whole in that vein. Others have written about how well (or
not so well) Faith herself works to address femininity in games, but
not too much writing has looked at potential interpretations of other
game aspects with respect to the state of female characters in the
gaming world. I'll point out just a few things in the game that seem to
comment on that topic, mostly in a simple allegorical way.

If we
start from the premise (a mere hypothesis for the sake of this thought
experiment) that ME is a commentary on female characters in gaming, it
might be worth considering the ME universe as being symbolic of the
gaming community. I don't think it's a stretch to assert that no
artistic medium can really mature as an art form as long as it
inherently excludes large segments of the human population. Gaming, in
many critics' eyes, still suffers from this problem to a large extent,
though a handful of games have dealt with gender and sex in a more
balanced way. In a way, the art design of the ME universe at the largest
scales is much like that state of affairs. It is rendered bland by it's
lack of color, with only a few bright spots that stand out, not unlike
how a medium is rendered ineffectual by lacking inclusion, save for the
few developers that manage to do something different. Faith literally
bounds from highlight to highlight, as if struggling to find meaning in a
world that is otherwise hostile to her.

The gameplay itself
argues for a rejection of the most common gameplay mechanic out there:
combat. While the player is capable of fighting, it is a decidedly
underpowered mechanic, so Faith's running ability and agility are
favored in most situations. Even in combat, most moves don't kill but
merely disarm. This is an implicit rejection of most games out there,
which often rely on combat alone. Mindless aggression is a common
stereotype of the male persona, so such a rejection is a comment, albeit
a simple one, on male dominance in games. Just as gameplay mechanics
are more interesting when fully developed into multiple modes (Faith
still can fight, it just isn't her only move), games as a whole
are more interesting when they embrace the whole of human experience,
including that of other genders.

The character development of ME
presents a bit of a bigger challenge in this interpretation, and I think
that is because the developers missed the mark to a degree as far as
the story, and thus character development, goes, as many reviewers have
noted. Faith is the obvious one. Refreshingly, she is a strong female
lead that, in this interpretation, serves as a proof of concept for a
successful female character driven game. She is modeled more like a
real woman, in contrast to the heavily objectified and sexualized
characters that populate so many other games, and that helps to make the
game inclusive and appealing to both men and women. While she is
attractive, she is not sexualized simply for the sake of the male gaze.
For the most part, I think Faith is a tremendous step forward in
character design in games, but she's not without flaws. In some
respects, the developers have simply made her a bit of a parody, by
having her physically overcome hugely strong men. She's relatively
skinny and lacking in muscle, and there is no way such a person could do
some of the things she does. To some extent, suspension of disbelief
works, but on the other hand, it seems that the developers were having
her act like a man while looking like a woman. Still, she works overall.

There
are other characters in ME. I was particularly intrigued by the
janitor, arguably the most minor of characters. He (we know he is a he
from a note on a computer screen) is unseen, but he leaves notes and
objects throughout the levels of ME. He is characterized comically as
rather dumb, and he is friends with his pet rat, seen throughout the
game. To me, he seems to represent ignorant, but not malevolent, gamers
that tacitly support the status quo. They, and he, do this to some
extent through expectations for how a game should look and function. An
action hero is surely a muscly man, as the janitor assumes in a drawing
of the mysterious character who has been knocking down all the red
doors. Still, the janitor senses that things aren't quite right, as is
seen in another drawing featuring a rat in a cage, surrounded by
watching eyes and armed men. Yet another drawing (inside the truck in
the level, "The Boat") shows many featureless faces with one unique
dark-haired individual, all surrounded by question marks. Perhaps this
is the janitor's shock at catching a glimpse at the real main character
of ME. I surely missed some of the little details regarding the janitor,
as most are barely noticeable, so there is likely a good deal more
subtlety in this regard.

Ultimately, ME seems to take a hopeful
view of gaming's future ability to be inclusive of female characters and
mature into the art form we all hope it will become. This hope is most
elegantly expressed through the beauty of the city. It's grey and, in
spots, ugly if you look closely, but upon backing up, you notice that
there is a great deal of beauty about it. Indeed, in the final scene we
see the city at twilight for the first time, and we see, amidst a sea of
colorful blue lights, that it is capable of lighting up. That is one of
the lessons of ME. While games are quite imperfect, including ME
itself, there is great beauty there now and even more in its future, as
long as we keep running forward against the odds.

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